The Last Night In Gracey Manor
by Werecat Boy
Summary: Completed: A mortal visitor is trapped for the night in Gracey Manor the Haunted Mansion.
1. Chapter 1

This short story is based on Disneyland/Disney World'sHaunted Mansion attractions and the 1963 Robert Wise film The Haunting. Please read & respond.

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I hate this house. I don't know why I even agreed to come here. It sounded very inviting in the letter. Join a team of spirit researchers to spend a week at Gracey Manor to see if it has any supernatural activity. I first scoffed at the idea, thinking ghosts were just a bunch of stupid nonsense, and just came along to have a good laugh. But now, there's nothing more than I want than to leave.

They have all abandoned me. All of the others left after what happened tonight in the upstairs hallway. Why didn't I just leave with them? Why on earth did I decide to stay here? But now the house is locked, and Mr. O'Dell, the caretaker, won't come here until morning. I'm all alone in this vulgar mansion. Why in heaven's name did I decide to stay?

I can see now why ghosts would roam this place. It's gloomy and depressing. This house seems to suck all the joy and life out of anything. It's as if darkness is always constantly surrounding you. I'm not surprised that so much death has taken place here. It definitely fits the stereotype of all haunted houses or mansions.

Death, murder, insanity, suicide: these are the words the local townspeople often associate with this mansion. And I can't think of better words that befit this horrid place. The master of this mansion, George Gracey, died in 1898 when he was only 35 years old – he committed suicide by hanging himself in the attic's tower. I'm not surprised; this whole place has a feeling of madness to it. It's dark and cold, like something is hiding within the walls. Like some secret is lying within the depths of this house.

Master Gracey's first wife, Lily, met an untimely end like her husband. Looking at her portrait in the parlor, she was absolutely gorgeous and it's easy to see why George Gracey loved and adored her. She had a bright, warm smile, sparkling hazel eyes, and her shiny brown hair styled into a Victorian bun. She originally was a tightrope walker at a circus, when she and George met. The two apparently fell head-over-heels in love with each other, and Lily left the circus when George proposed marriage to her. It's hard to imagine how such a beautiful and cheerful young woman like her managed to live in such an ominous and dismal place like this. She died in the summer of 1894, while performing her old tightrope-walking act over the river behind the house for friends at a party. Apparently, unknown to everyone, the river was actually infested with alligators. Lily's rope came undone and she fell into the river, and the large reptiles swarmed and attacked her.

Two years after Lily died, Gracey married Emily Cavanaugh, a young, wealthy woman who inherited her fortune after her parents passed away. The townspeople believed that Emily had only married George for his money, and that Gracey was still in grief over the death of Lily. Emily was only married to him for not even a day before she died. On their honeymoon at the mansion, Emily wanted to play a game of hide-and-seek with her new groom, being the young playful girl she was. She hid in a trunk in the attic, which closed and latched on her. She suffocated before being found.

And the deaths of some of Gracey's relatives and servants were just as shocking and tragic. Lily's cousin, April, took a fall down the grand staircase. The mansion's handyman Asa Gilbert, gardener Eddy Foster, and liveryman Daniel Patterson stumbled into a patch of quicksand near the river behind the mansion one night. Master Gracey's cousin, Huet, and his friend, Charles Sewell, both shot each other when they got into an argument, and challenged each other to a duel. And Gracey's great-aunt Victoria suffered a sudden heart attack before blowing out the candles on her cake at her birthday party. Now, it's so easy to see why people claim this place is restless with spirits…

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Note: The names of George Gracey, Lily Gracey, Emily Cavanaugh, Asa Gilbert, Eddy Foster, Daniel Patterson, Victoria Boufont, and Dick O'Dell are all fan based names from the Haunted Mansion's Ghostly Gallery. 


	2. Chapter 2

But now I know for certain that the ghosts of the Graceys do continue to dwell in this place. I've seen, heard, and sensed things here this past week that I would have never believed before. Books falling from their shelves, chairs rocking, a candelabra floating, and marble busts moving, all by themselves. I've heard knocking on the doors in the middle of the night, a piano and harp playing here in the music parlor, people talking and laughing in the dining room, a woman talking in Lily Gracey's sitting room, moaning in the guest room hallway, and a heart beating in the attic. I've also sensed strange icy-like chills in almost every room in this mansion, especially in the master bedroom.

However, the most frightening thing is the sight I witnessed tonight. I looked out of my bedroom window and saw the spirit of Lily Gracey walking along the banks of the river. It's hard to describe the sight, but she was somewhat surrounded by a blue glowing aura. She had on a Victorian lavender summer dress that had tears and rips in it. She carried an orange parasol in her hands that was similarly shredded. Her hair was in an unusual style, and also somewhat disheveled. However, what haunts me was her face. I'll never forgot that look I saw on her face as long as I live. Her beautiful, once happy and smiling, face had a grim, sad, and forlorn look. She looked like she was in mourning. I remember I dashed out of my room from fear at seeing her materialize, and ran downstairs into the foyer. I then halted as I witnessed George Gracey's ghost hanging from a noose tied to the chandelier. I stood there, frozen at the sight of the specter before I screamed and ran here into the music parlor.

But, even though they frightened me, it's not the presence of the Graceys' spirits that I'm worried about. I fear the house, the house itself. This mansion is alive. The wallpaper seems to form horrid looking faces, and they constantly stare, never taking their gaze off of you. There seems to be evil grinning faces everywhere: on the banisters, in the woodwork, in the ceiling patterns. This place is so terrible, I don't know how even the Graceys managed to live here back in the 1890s.

Every room in this house has something dark about it. The portraits in the portrait hall always seem to give you a cold, lifeless stare. And there is something very strange and bizarre about the portraits. Earlier tonight, the paintings of Master Gracey, Lily, Emily, Madame Leota, and the mansion's musician, Wolfgang Furlong, all changed into horrid images as I looked upon them. The portrait of Gracey turned into a skeleton with a noose wrapped tightly around his neck. The portrait of Lily showed her forlorn-looking and disheveled, like her spirit I saw earlier tonight, with her dress and parasol ripped and a large bloody cut on her left cheek; and a large alligator with bloody teeth appeared behind her. Emily in her wedding dress slowly aged and transformed into a rotting corpse. The portrait of Madame Leota holding a crystal ball in her hands, morphed to show her decapitated; with her head inside the crystal ball. And the portrait of Mr. Furlong changed to reveal a piano wire wrapped tightly around his neck. All of the portraits are just horrible and morbid; I could hardly even bare to look at them as they changed. The evil of this house has probably possessed these paintings.

And then there is the ballroom and dining room. These two rooms look like they were still frozen in time. There is sheet music still on the pipe organ's console, the covers for the furniture have been taken off, and there still is a deck of cards scattered around on a table – its game never finished. The table in the dining room is all set with the finest wine glasses and good China dishes. Now they are all covered in cobwebs and dust from age and neglect.

The conservatory, once abundant with an array of exotic and beautiful plant life, is filled with withered and lifeless flora. The room's glass is obviously cracked and broken in some areas. Tables and chairs in there have been overturned or scattered around.

Although, one of the most frightening places is the attic. Hundreds and hundreds of objects are littered around the place: furniture, silverware, dishes, suits, dresses, sea chests, trunks, dressers, statues, books, even musical instruments and old sailing navigation equipment. It's a place that seems to echo with long-past memories.

Then there is also the séance parlor. I think it is one of the most bizarre places in this whole mansion. The room is almost draped completely in black, with the exception of a small lamp, a chair, and a crystal ball on top of a table. Apparently, Master Gracey was believed to have been very interested in the supernatural and occult, so he had even hired a spirit medium and fortune-teller named Madame Leota. I don't know much about this Leota woman; the other researchers who had spent the week here with me either didn't know much about her either, or they didn't tell me a lot about her. But, many people believed her to be a very cold and sly woman. I've been told that both Lily and Emily had detested her, because the old medium said wicked lies about the two women behind their backs. But anyhow, Gracey was apparently so obsessed with spiritual contact that he had turned one of the upstairs parlors into the séance room, where he and Leota held séances.

However, I absolutely detest the master bedroom the most. It is the coldest part of the house. It feels thirty degrees colder in there than it does in any of the other rooms. Everything is covered with dust; items that brought the Graceys happy memories: Lily's music box she received from George on their second wedding anniversary and Master Gracey's pocket watch. Now they are only painful reminders of the Graceys.

I just wish this night were over. I can now hear the clock out in the foyer chiming midnight. Won't morning ever come? I want to escape from this house's evil clutches. That's what this mansion is…evil. It's just like a vicious beast or predator. It lured the unsuspecting Graceys into its depths, only to make them perish in horrible ways. Their ghosts are now prisoners within this house, trying to ward off visitors so they don't meet a similar fate. And now this mansion waits for anyone foolish enough to enter. But I will not let…


	3. Chapter 3

Oh, lord. I hear it upstairs. It's coming, it's coming. The awful banging just like earlier tonight. It sounds as if someone is knocking on the doors and walls with a cannon. It's looking for me. This monster of the house is looking for me. I'm its next victim. It will keep searching through every room until it finds me.

I know it's not one of the Graceys. Their ghosts mean me no harm, they tried to warn me. It's the sinister monster of this mansion. The evil force and presence that was born when this house was built. It knows my name and who I am. And it's searching for me.

Now it's getting closer. I can hear it coming down the grand staircase into the foyer. The chiming of the clock now sounds like the toll of a requiem bell, ringing out my final hour. I have to run; I have to run away from it. But where should I go? There's no escape from this mansion. Everything is locked.

It's now searching the downstairs. Banging on the parlor and conservatory door, then onto the dining room, then to the kitchen, then the ballroom, and then the portrait hall. It's near now. It's banging on the library door. Very soon it will come knocking here on the music parlor's door.

Oh, lord I wish I was somewhere else. Instead, I'm cowering behind a piano waiting for the sinister force to burst through the door. It's now moving across the wall. The sound is terrible. It seems like it could knock the whole mansion down to the foundation. The photographs and portraits are now rattling against the wall from the banging.

Now it's at the door. Why won't it stop? Just please let the awful noise stop. It sounds like it's going to burst the door into a thousand splinters.

It stopped. The terrible pounding has now stopped. But I know it's still out there behind the door, waiting for me to make some noise to let it know that someone is in here. I won't move an inch; I'll barely even breathe. But what's the point? It probably knows and senses that someone's hiding in here, and it won't leave until it storms into the room.

Why did I stay here? Before the others left, I heard it calling me. I swear I could hear this mansion calling my name, inviting me to stay here. They asked me if I wanted to leave with them, but I answered this evil house's call and stayed. Why? Why did I listen to it? If only I had been more sensible this never would be happening. But now it's too late.

And now the pounding is starting up again. It keeps banging and banging against the door, more and more frantic. It does know that I'm here. It won't leave until I open the door and let it in. I should just go over and open the door, so it finally doesn't keep searching and it stops that awful banging.

It stopped again. I can now hear heavy breathing traveling around the doorframe. The doorknob is now turning. I just want to shout, "Go away!" as if that will do me any good.

But now there's silence, complete silence. No banging, no knob turning, no breathing, just silence. Has it given up? Did it realize that nobody was in here? I wait for another banging sound or boom, but there's nothing. It's silent; it must have left. At last, I can finally leave this house of horror.

But as I reach the door, I hear it again. It's the loud, heavy breathing. But now, it's here in the room with me. It's coming from right behind me.

THE END


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